When I joined TMP in 2012 and I was asked to look for a media planner, I thought to myself why does one even need a planner to build recruitment media plan. I knew only about job sites and LinkedIn and no matter what the need was or skills or profile, use one of the job sites was the answer. As my exposure to the global recruitment media grew, I did realize there is whole world there beyond the traditional media.

Job sites and LinkedIn are still important and continue to be the corner stone of every recruitment strategy. However, they come with uncomfortable dependencies. For starters, recruiters are forced to be locked with the set of products they chose for a year (irrespective of returns) and if they chose to be committed only for 3 or 6 months to pivot their strategy, they are penalized with premium costs. One has to live with the decision throughout the year. As an agency, I would like to have control on strategy, spends and be able to optimize as I move along and I would like to believe the recruiters also want the same. There are media few options like Indeed and SEM which are performance based models (Cost per click) offering leverage to optimize and there are media options like mobile, network advertising and re-targeting which are performance based models and also create extended reach. Moreover, recruiters can use digital and mobile to target based on user behaviors which is more potent and turns out to be a scalable / flexible model based on performance.

I do realize now, in India it is not about lack of options, but it is about the lack of understanding. Of course, there is always an advantage with job sites that would provide tangible results within seconds. With recruitment teams chasing the numbers and TAT for open positions, it becomes difficult to wait for the campaign to mature and give results. And there is always only that much money recruitment has and they have to balance between known and the unknown. It is understandable that most of us go with the known.

Personally, I try to keep it simple. I ask one question – Where do job sites spend most of their marketing dollars? Answer is simple, SEM and SEO. The reason is that even today, majority of the job searches originate on a search engine and that is where job sites (including LinkedIn and Indeed) are putting their money in. Having said that, it is not easy to compete with job sites whose marketing spends will be way more than the recruitment budgets. To start with, companies should at the least own their brand keywords on search engines. There is no point in a job site getting all the traffic from a branded key word on google. The brand should own the branded keywords. For specific skills and campaigns, one can try mobile or re-targeting. We at TMP India are using mobile advertising based on geo-fencing for a technology client and the results till now show that it is working well. From budgets perspective, start slow and make some low levels investments. Beauty of these options is that they give the control to the recruiter.

I hope that new media gets popular in India and as a result, job sites alter their engagement models that create a win-win situation for everyone.